Prototyping Protopia In Swiss Alps

The Great Convergence of Switzerland, Zuzalu and the NextGen Village

With a 700 year history of self-organization, its decentralized structure and political neutrality, Switzerland is possibly the most crypto-aligned state in the world.

This post is about 4 different things, and their convergence. About what we can learn from the Swiss and apply to DAOs and network states, its about a futuristic eco-village with a big vision, and about building a permanent Zuzalu network node in the world‘s most decentralized state.

This May in Switzerland, you‘ll get a glimpse into the future of human civilization. A civilizational accelerator pushing the frontiers in areas like governance, token economies, health, mobility, resource management, housing, AI & robotics.

In this post:

• Why Switzerland is awesome

• What are Zuitzerland & Zuzalu

• NextGen Village???

Switzerland

First off, Switzerland is one of the only direct democracies in the world. As in, they actually do a great job at it, not just paying lip service. This works well for Switzerland because they have a looong history of cooperatively running their societies.

Home to less than 9 million people, yet 9,600 cooperatives. For the past 700 years, the Swiss built cooperatives for anything from food and housing, to banks, media and fashion. And not some niche organizations - Migros & Coop are two of the most dominant chains in Switzerland.

Switzerland is one of the most decentralized countries in the world. Divided in 26 cantons or semi-autonomous regions with their own constitutions, legislative bodies, governments and judicial systems.

They push as much decision making as possible to the local level - roughly 80% of public services including things like education, healthcare, urban planning, social services, and law enforcement are all managed at the local level.

Federal government only handles matters of national interest, like foreign policy, defense, national infrastructure and meta constitution - where Switzerland is known for political neutrality.

The Swiss also put a high bar on living. They care less about material wealth, and more about living well. Besides a great healthcare system, 75% of the Swiss regularly enjoy outdoor activities such as hiking, biking or running.

Yet Switzerland is ranked third in the world by the percentage millionaires. Roughly 15% of Swiss are millionaires compared to 8% of Singaporeans. But with things like strong social safety nets and affordable housing policies, even the low rungs of society can afford to live a good life.

In short:

• A well functioning direct democracy

• A culture and history of cooperatives

• Decentralization and political neutrality

• Emphasis on human wellbeing and nature

Zuitzerland

Zuitzerland is multiple things, and partially still in the process of defining itself and its goals. It‘s about prototyping a Swiss-inspired network society, about building a permanent node for the Zuzalu network and, long term, about becoming Switzerland‘s 27th canton.

More than anything, Zuitzerland is about learning how the Swiss run Switzerland and their cooperatives, and, hopefully, about inspiring the Swiss to start using Web3 technologies for some of the things they do.

Zuitzerland starts as an event - or two.

We went to Switzerland to attend the Zuitzerland offsite/mini conference with the goal of planning the full event next year. This year it went on for 10 days with 30ish people. Next year, it will be 200-300 people for 6-8 weeks. 👀

Over this period of time, participants will engage with local leaders and cooperatives, as well as talk about completely unrelated topics.

Overall, Zuitzerland will be about:

• Learning from the Swiss

• Teaching the Swiss about Web3

• Balancing Solarpunk & Lunarpunk philosophies

• DAOs, defensive accelerationism & regenerative living

• Incubating new projects at the intersection

Zuzalu

To understand why Zuitzerland, you need to know Zuzalu.

I barely do, but here‘s what I do know about it.

Zuzalu was started by Vitalik as a co-locating experiment.

Vitalik wanted something longer than a conference week or a hackathon, but shorter than a university course. The goal was to have a load of interesting people stay together in one place long enough that they can be productive and start projects together, rather than just party for a week.

He came up with Zuzalu, which was a 3 month residency in Montenegro. They rented a whole resort where 200+ people could stay, and they subsequently organized a shitload of events - from proper conferences to infinite meetups.

Topics included but weren‘t limited to:

• Crypto, obviously

• Zero-knowledge tech

• Artificial intelligence

• Longevity

• Network states

Without going into too much detail, let‘s just say that bringing 200 people from across all of these different fields, resulted in a lot of very interesting encounters and events as well as actual projects. Lives were changed, with no exaggeration.

Since Montenegro, people of Zuzalu organized dozens of events around the world and built a bunch of projects including a whole suite of tools built for organizing the Zuzalu community, its events and discussions. You could call Zuzalu a movement or a network state, but it kind of refuses to be boxed in.

In short, I‘d say Zuzalu is about bringing together the frontiers of technology, aggregating the brightest minds across all of these frontiers, pushing the boundaries and building cool shit.

NextGen Village

And now - the fourth and final piece - the NextGen Village.

This is probably also the most mind blowing part, because its about giving all of the above + more, a permanent base - a grounding in the real world.

“A home for pioneers and a place that sparks our collective imagination of what life in a regenerative, technologically advanced and culturally thriving society of the future could look like.”

The people of NextGen Village are building a hub for exploring a wide range of topics, all related to advancing human civilization into the regenerative future.

Governance, economy, science, education, art, food, philosophy, space, health, new work, mobility, water, energy, data, resource & waste management, construction & housing, retail & commerce, manufacturing & robotics - you name it!

They secured a 100,000m2 location that will be remodeled into a permanent refuge for builders of frontier technologies. A futuristic-looking eco village, spread across a dozen different DAOs managing different pieces of infrastructure and *labs*. A “civilizational accelerator”.

Each of the labs will be hosting one or multiple startups working on anything from vertical aeroponic farming to vertical take-off vehicles. They already have a few companies committed to moving their HQs there once the place is operational.

The place itself will be able to permanently house 500 people - with sleeping pods and camping areas for additional temporary accommodations. In total, it will be able to host events for up to 5,000 people.

NextGen Village is a part of a larger network of such places being built across the world, you can read more about NGV here.

Zuitzerland will be the first event to be held there.

Relation to MetaGame

Now how is all of this related to MetaGame, you may ask? I‘d say that it‘s related to MetaGame in that MetaGame is about finding metagames, and that MetaGame itself very much occupies itself with topics like DAOs, network states & building well-functioning and sustainable socioeconomic systems.

Well, Switzerland has been playing the metagame in terms of building societies, Zuzalu has been playing the metagame of building an interdisciplinary community of big brains, NextGen Village is playing the metagame of building sustainable futuristic villages that act as incubators, and Zuitzerland is playing the metagame of bringing it all together.

As for us, we see our role there as being about documenting everything and producing video content related to all of these pieces, including the evolution of NextGen Village itself.

In fact, we‘ve already recorded a load of sessions & interviews which will be published over the next few months 👀

MetaFest Switzerland?

Since we are extremely interested in all of these topics as well as the location itself, we will likely spend the full 6-8 weeks at Zuitzerland.

Moreover, we have been welcomed to, and are increasingly interested in - organizing MetaFest Switzerland 👀

• Should we?

Either way - stay in the loop on all things Zuitzerland!

Much love ❤️,
peth